Free magazine, but expensive collectables: A-Station Telephone Cards

(tags magazine, free, anime, illustrator, telephone card)

A-Station magazine is a free glossy magazine "for the Akiba-otaku". They just celebrated 1 year of publication. It has some reviews of recent and upcoming anime/manga, as well as maid cafe and poster inserts. It is pretty limited distribution here in Kobe, but I am able to obtain a copy at "otaku" stores like Gamers, since they have increased their publication to 10_0000 copies. Pretty much I collect it based on the magazine cover illustrations alone:

These are the work of illustrator Atsushi Yoshinari (吉成篤). Moe!

Actually these are scans of the collectable telephone cards up for sale right now at the web store. They have online ordering by debit-prepay card, but I am doing the old-fashioned way by sending them postal checks (定額小為替). 1200 yen per card, ouch. There is a limited print run of 200 cards per design, on a first-come first-served basis. For the whole Japan. This is not a familiar system. It's either a limited print run by draw, or all-applicants print run. I sent my money last month pretty quickly, but I wonder if it got through. They are doing the same run this month, so I'm buying an incomplete second set. Heheh.

Before this, I was able to buy A-Station's first three issue covers reprinted onto telephone cards. It was totally easy to obtain it by postal check order, so I hope its the same for the above 9 cards.